Canada’s financial sector has never been bigger

Four years after the financial crisis, Canada’s financial sector has never been bigger. Is that something to be proud of or something to fear?

Finance, defined as economic output of banks and insurers, is bigger in both absolute and relative terms. The industry generated 6.65 per cent of gross domestic product in Canada in June, the latest month for which Statistics Canada provides a detailed breakdown on its web site. That’s well up from the 6.1 per cent level produced by finance in January of 2006. Over that time, finance’s economic output has risen almost 17 per cent.